How to move a 200-ton spectrometer across Europe

Re:How to move a 200-ton spectrometer across Europe by nilsimsa on Thursday July 24, 2014 @12:04PM (#8080311)

Shouldn't this have been better planned out before they built it? Or was there no other choice?

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Re:How to move a 200-ton spectrometer across Europe by astrodust on Thursday July 24, 2014 @12:27PM (#8080504)

I'm sure they had one of those "Oh..." moments when they realized there was something that didn't quite work out.

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Re:How to move a 200-ton spectrometer across Europe by aragot on Thursday July 24, 2014 @01:29PM (#8080931)

There are a few moments in recent history where I wish I had been. This is one of them, along with the day after the 2007 iPhone keynote in the Android 1 offices, and when the French company realized they'd built their trains 1cm too wide for a thousand platforms [1].

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/french-rail-o...

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Re:How to move a 200-ton spectrometer across Europe by brazzy on Thursday July 24, 2014 @05:48PM (#8082481)

Actually, I'm pretty sure that this was planned and budgeted for very early in the project. This is highly specialized gear that you cannot just build smaller, let alone shop around for a maker closer to you.

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Re:How to move a 200-ton spectrometer across Europe by fnordfnordfnord on Thursday July 24, 2014 @03:36PM (#8081661)

Having been involved with a couple of large collaboration physics experiments (but not this one) I can relate my experience that everything is planned in advance in frustratingly great detail. I'd assume that someone promised to be able to transport it via the short route, and was simply unable to deliver, or that the design specs had to be changed after the contracts had been let or something to that effect.

edit: Note here that they started planning at or before 2001 http://www.katrin.kit.edu/130.php#Anker10

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